KOLKATA, In­dia – The West In­dies’ unim­pres­sive form in 2026 will not be a de­ter­min­ing fac­tor in how far they go in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, says cap­tain Shai Hope.

The re­gion­al side be­gan their quest for an un­prece­dent­ed third T20 World Cup ti­tle with a com­fort­able 35-run vic­to­ry over Scot­land at Eden Gar­den on Sat­ur­day, thanks main­ly to out­stand­ing per­for­mances from Shim­ron Het­my­er 64 runs and Ro­mario Shep­herd, who took five wick­ets for 20 runs.

It was just their third T20I win in eight match­es for the year – count­ing their warmup match against Afghanistan – fol­low­ing bi­lat­er­al se­ries loss­es to Afghanistan and South Africa last month.

The re­sults fol­lowed a 3-1 T20I se­ries de­feat to New Zealand in De­cem­ber.

Speak­ing in a post-match press con­fer­ence, Hope ad­mit­ted that while the Windies had not been in the best of form late­ly, he said the team was in­tent on turn­ing their for­tunes around at the World Cup.

“That is my fo­cus here to­day. We start­ed the tour­na­ment; this is a World Cup we’re play­ing. Yes, you have to look at what hap­pened in the past, but our main fo­cus was to start the tour­na­ment well and con­tin­ue the mo­men­tum for as long as we can and see how deep we can go in the tour­na­ment, and hope­ful­ly, at the end, we can lift the tro­phy again sim­i­lar­ly to what the guys did back in 2016.

“We can’t hide from the truth. We haven’t had the suc­cess that we would have liked in the last few bi­lat­er­al se­ries, but again, the main fo­cus is here on this World Cup. Put the past in the past, and let’s make sure that we do the busi­ness here in In­dia,” Hope said.

The West In­dies cap­tured their sec­ond T20 World Cup ti­tle at Kolkata back in 2016 when they de­feat­ed Eng­land by four wick­ets in a thrilling con­test.

Hope said play­ing their open­ing match of the com­pe­ti­tion at that same venue and hav­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence of head coach Daren Sam­my and play­ers John­son Charles and Ja­son Hold­er, who were all part of that 2016 win­ning team, gave them a boost against Scot­land.

“If we were placed at a dif­fer­ent venue, the same mind­set would have ap­plied, the same plans, maybe slight­ly dif­fer­ent de­pend­ing on the type of sur­faces that you’re play­ing on.

“But we have a few mem­bers in our squad who have been a part of that, from the coach to a cou­ple play­ers in John­son Charles and Ja­son Hold­er, so that does in­stil some ex­tra con­fi­dence in the dress­ing room and a bit of ex­pe­ri­ence as well,” Hope said.

“Be­ing in that po­si­tion, know­ing what it feels like to lift the tro­phy, just try­ing to share that amongst the group, I’m sure the guys are re­al­ly ready to go, but it’s a good feel­ing to have two guys who’ve been there and done that in a sense.”

Sat­ur­day’s Sum­marised Scores

West In­dies 182/5 in 20 overs (Shim­ron Het­my­er 64, Bran­don King 35, Brad Cur­rie 2-23) beat Scot­land 147 all out in 18.5 overs (Richie Berring­ton 42, Tom Bruce 35, Ro­mario Shep­herd 5-20, Ja­son Hold­er 3-30) by 35 runs.

(CMC)